reality what in this play she only excellently acted, an agreeably gay
woman of quality a little too conscious of her natural attractions. I
have often seen her in private societies where women of the best
rank might have borr'd some part of her behaviour without the least
diminution of their sense or dignity. And this very morning, when I am
now writing at the Bath, November 11, 1738, the same words were said
of her by a lady of condition, whose better judgment of her personal
merit in that light has embolden'd me to repeat them."

The best of us have a wee bit of snobbishness buried deep in the
inmost recesses of our souls, and Colley, who was neither the best nor
the worst of humanity, had this quality well developed. To see that
one has but to read the above quotation between the lines. He loved a
lord as ardently as did the next man, and he attached to rank the same
exaggerated importance which pervades, with all the unwelcome odour of
sickening incense, the literature of his age. As Macklin so well said
of him, Nature formed Cibber for a coxcomb, and it is quite probable
that he took greater delight in being thought a leader of fashion than
a writer of charming plays. Indeed, he was careful to cultivate the
society of young noblemen, and this he was able to do by virtue of
his theatrical successes, and, more helpful still, by a levity of
character which stuck to him despite his great earnestness in many
directions. Perhaps his frivolity and his love of pleasure, including
the delights of the gaming table, may have been half assumed; perhaps
he was only playing one of his many parts. He certainly succeeded in
the rôle; he enlivened the dissipations of many a beau by his quaint
conceits and flashes of humour, and went on his way rejoicing that he
could be the boon companion of twenty idle lords.[A]

[Footnote A: Colley Cibber, one of the earliest of the dramatic